07.31.07

Remember last week’s discussion about a stack of so-called ‘standards’ from Microsoft, which are geared towards total hijack of personal data, media, and the Web? A new article reminds us of another piece of the puzzle — Microsoft’s HD.

In trying to drive the technology further into the market, Microsoft has developed a plug-in that adds HD Photo support to Adobe’s popular Photoshop editing program.

Quoted above is the part showing that Microsoft’s support for its ‘standards’ does not comes from industry. Microsoft just ‘lends’ its support. There is a pattern here. It has already bought some support before, remember? Remind yourselves of OOXML’s artificial (paid-for) acceptance. Novell, Turbolinux, Corel, Linspire, Xandros, and maybe even Sun receive OOXML encouragements. Standards are being bought, not earned. JPEG 2000 was fine, but Microsoft just needed to ‘innovate’ its own format — one that it can control, extend, and even use to discriminate against rival software (including operating systems). We are not entirely sure if HD is also associated with patents (i.e. costs).

In our continuing series on the latest version of the world’s most popular (and least understood) free/open source license, today we look at a controversial subject: Digital Rights Management (DRM). My colleague David Berlind has another name for DRM: Content, Restriction, Annulment, and Protection (CRAP).

Elsewhere on the Web, someone decided to share malicious ideas that could ‘poison’ the licence.

Since MS seems to really dislike GPL v3, they could solve a lot of their problems with a simple move: Release all the code necessary to get interoperability under Linux working. Under GPL v2 only.

“It has assumed that any direct investment or interaction with OSS (open source software) would send a false signal to the industry regard its long-term business strategies, (which is) a heavy focus on intellectual property investment and control,” Driver said.

“The potential for copyright and patent infringement is the No. 1 inhibitor right now for organizations in adopting more open source software in their organization,” Lawton said in the afternoon conference call. “Close behind that is the availability of support.”

How does Novell fit into all of this? Well, according to this new item, Novell just keeps filing patents. Novell might actually be part of the problem (and not just passively).

I’ve heard several reports of supporters of OOXML trying to get national standards bodies to change their votes from “NO with comments” to “YES with comments” because “it’s the same thing.” The logic, which I’ll explain in a later post, is that any comments will trigger a ballot resolution meeting, so there is no need to be so negative and vote NO.

It’s with much disgust that I see that after an initial membership controlled by Microsoft of 7 to 1, it was only possible to add the participation of 12 more entities, 6 in favor of open standards, and 6 in favor of Microsoft.

If from the the first meeting it was clear that there was a favorable support for Microsoft of 7 to 1, the voting just an hour ago of YES WITH COMMENTS is sadly revealing.

This is not the first time that we observe ‘funny’ OOXML maneuvers in Portugal. We covered this in the past on numerous occasions.

Here’s an event you might like to know about. 4Linux in Brazil has a live podcast show and the next theme is “Microsoft, Open source e Interoperabilidade com OpenXML”. I bet you can figure it out even if, like me, you don’t know Portuguese. Yes, a show about Microsoft, Open Source and “interoperability” with OpenXML.